50 students selected for the first INGENIUM Student Conference
The ten INGENIUM universities have chosen their delegations for the first INGENIUM Student Conference, which will bring together student representatives and students who answered the open call. From 20 to 25 November they will meet in Oviedo to decide how students should take part in the alliance over the next two years.
Ten delegations
The call, open during the first half of October, received 169 applications. Each university then chose its own delegation from the applications of its students, combining three profiles in the proportion it saw fit. Some places went to students who had never taken part in any INGENIUM activity and will bring a fresh look at what the alliance offers. Others went to students who already know INGENIUM from a Blended Intensive Programme, a mobility or a Student Partnership, and to student representatives, from members of the INGENIUM Student Board to people sitting on the representative bodies of their own universities.
The result is a group of 50 students who will arrive in Oviedo on Friday 20 November and stay for the whole week.
Four days to write a roadmap
The Conference will have a single, very concrete goal. The delegations will write the INGENIUM Student Participation Roadmap 2027-2028, a document of around ten pages that every participant will sign as co-author. To get there, they will work in four streams. The first will look at the INGENIUM offer and at what students want from it. The second will focus on student representation and on how local student boards should relate to the INGENIUM Student Board. The third will deal with how the alliance reaches students and what it should stop doing, and the fourth will have to do with campus life.
On Saturday the streams will take stock of where things stand today. Sunday will be for drafting, with a matchmaking session for the INGENIUM Student Partnerships running in parallel. On Monday the four chapters will become one document, and the Steering Committee will join the students in the afternoon to discuss it with them. The Roadmap will close with the commitments students are ready to make and with a handful of specific requests to the alliance, each with an owner and a date.
From the Academic Assembly to the Final Conference
The Student Conference is part of the week of the INGENIUM Final Conference, which closes the first funding phase of the alliance, 2023-2026. On the afternoon of Tuesday 24 November, the delegations will present the Roadmap to the INGENIUM Academic Assembly in the Historic Building of the University of Oviedo. The next day, the INGENIUM Student Board will bring its ideas to the Final Conference, in a session on the future of student engagement in INGENIUM.
From 2027 the alliance will start a new stage with Next INGENIUM, and the Roadmap will put the students’ own proposals on the table just as that stage begins.
